Human Development
Empathy
Description:
[Empathy] is a psychological term, also used in aesthetics, to describe the transferring of feelings evoked by an object to that object itself. Thus a room which evoked sad feelings in an individual would be thought of by him or her as a "sad" room. The term is also used to describe the apprehension, whether intellectual or imaginative, and whether intentionally or not, of another person's state of mind. Thus [to empathize] is to experience vicariously the thoughts, feelings and actions of another person, thereby understanding (and, to some extent, being able to predict) his behaviour and his capacity to deal with a given situation. The knowledge that one is thus understood is liberating and stimulates the growth of a relationship. The term [sympathy] refers to the existence of feelings similar to those experienced by someone else, to put one's self in the place of another; it may result in being overwhelmed by those feelings. This is contrasted with [identification] which refers to similar feelings based on some unconscious quality held in common, even where there is no emotional attachment. In contrast, [alienation] is a reaction to, and rejection of, the experience of empathy.It has been said that sympathy with others and awareness of them as other selves is a step in the knowledge of one's self as a person. Feelings aroused may be in line with those already experienced; where they are at odds with those of the individual he may well overcome this sympathetic response (bravery in the face of cowardice, for example). Adam Smith referred to sympathy as the fundamental fact of moral consciousness.
In contrast to views, expressed in the past (Piaget, for example) that empathy with others could not be felt until development of cognitive abilities allowing the child to see things from another's perspective, at the age of about 7 or 8, recent psychological research has shown empathetic response in children as young as 9 months old, who will cry in response to another infant's cry. Even newborn babies cry more loudly when they hear another crying than when they hear computer simulation of such cries. And by the time a child can walk it will take active measures to assist another in distress (fetching a comforter, for example).